Has it really been four years since I’ve written a post sharing June’s favorites?! Say it ain’t so! Unless I’m missing something in the archives, the last version was posted in 2019, when she turned three. (I also posted a few of Shep’s favorites at age 3, two years ago.) This post is clearly overdue, so let’s dive in.

Clothing and accessory favorites for 7-year-old girls:

Sneakers | We bought these Saucony sneaks for June for Christmas and were dismayed to see that they were falling apart by February – sad, because I love the look! We replaced them with these Adidas (different color pattern than above) in May and they still look brand new.

Needlepoint baseball hat | The cutest designs and perfect to pull on sunny walks and outdoor camp days.

Chino shorts and knit pull-on shorts | 90% of my kids’ clothes are hand-me-downs from my sister or consignment sale finds, but sometimes I need to supplement specific categories. We’ve been very happy with these two inexpensive shorts this summer!

Lake pajamas | Paying very little money for kids’ clothing means sometimes I treat myself to a splurge. Lake pajamas are $$$ but they’re oh so cute, very soft, and well made. I intentionally chose a striped pattern I can pass down through the kids (though the strawberries above are cute!).

Poodle purse | This sparkly accessory was tucked in June’s stocking last Christmas, and she has very much enjoyed toting it around ever since.

Natives | These are the stapliest of staples in our house. To help ensure a color we’ll both love, I choose 6-8 of the 60+ colors and June makes the final decision. She just selected this color for her most recent pair, which is really lovely in person.

Watch | This watch is easy for her to clip on her wrist and set. She mostly wears it after school when she goes out to play in the neighborhood; we can set a timer/alarm to signal when it’s time to come home.

Game and gear favorites for 7-year-old girls:

Backpack | As a native New Englander, there’s no other choice for a kids’ backpack than LL Bean. We bought her a teal one in this size at the beginning of kindergarten and it’s still going strong.

Books | All books all the time – I shared a bunch of kindergarten and first grade favorite series here!

Catan Junior and cribbage | These are two of June’s favorite games right now – she and I both learned to play cribbage this summer! :) If you’ve ever loved playing Catan, I’ll say they did a really great job adapting a pretty complicated game for younger players.

Doodle Crate | When we received a duplicate Kiwi Crate a few months ago, I found out that we had actually received every single crate in their inventory – so we switched over to the Doodle Crate, and June has loved it!

Hairbrush | I’ve found the “shine” version of the Wet Brush is the best for gently detangling!

Jesus Storybook Bible and Kaleidoscope books | While the JSB is still requested multiple times a week around here (I don’t think you can ever grow out of it!), we’ve also added a few volumes of Kaleidoscope books of the Bible as a bridge to a full-text Bible. We’ve been happy with them!

Piano keyboard and books | When June started piano lessons this spring, this is the keyboard and the books her teacher recommended.

Priority Start 20″ bike | We love, love, love, LOVE our Priority Start bikes! June started with the 16″ and now rides the 20″ to and from school each day (while the 16″ has been passed down to Shep). Both still look pristine and work perfectly! I have no doubt we’ll add a 24″ to the garage once Annie’s ready to ride and everything needs to be passed down.

Tennis dress and racquet | Tennis seems to be June’s sport of choice so far. She specifically requested a white tennis dress, which tickled me :)

Yoto player | The Yoto is still going strong! She often listens at quiet time while puttering around her room, and since the cards load on my phone, too, we regularly listen to them on road trips as a family.

Any elementary-school favorites or questions about this age? I’d love to hear!

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Whew! A late-breaking monthly goals post if there ever was one, but that’s summer for you, I suppose :) It feels appropriate, because I’m keeping things super simple this month, goal-wise. I have so enjoyed having June as my buddy this summer that I want to keep my schedule as loose as possible to give us time and space for fun when I’m not working. Resisting the urge to pack in projects will hopefully give me that space, and leave me room to post here in the time I do have.

And even still, I might not get to all these goals – and that’s okay. To whit: I had planned to knock out a big chunk of budget updating after I finished work on Tuesday. But when June asked me to teach her how to play Dutch Blitz, I said yes. That “yes” felt hard for a moment – it’s always hard to reset your expectations – but I thought multiple times that evening about how happy I was that I had accepted her invitation. I can’t always say yes, but I never regret it when I do. That’s less of a huge life lesson and more of a bolstering reminder to myself to keep making the small decisions that add up to the life I’ll be thankful and happy I lived.

We stopped in DC to break up our road trip home from New England. It was a hot morning to walk the monuments and memorials, and the World War II Memorial was a welcome respite!

On my calendar:
— Shep is a guy that enjoys a birthday party, and this year we’re throwing him a joint effort with his best friend for even more fun (splitting the difference of their birthdays, which are about a month apart). The forecast is for 97 degrees for our playground fete…

What I’m loving right now:
— My sister wore these white linen pants in Maine and looked so very chic and comfy that I promptly ordered a pair. Size down!
— Speaking of clothes, I am seriously loving the ongoing clothing swap my friend Bethany and I have orchestrated. We’re a similar size, and every month or so, we choose 3-5 items from our closet to loan the other. Think Rent the Runway, but the free friend version :) It is SO fun to have new pieces to try and I love that we can inject novelty into our wardrobes without buying anything new!
— We had dinner with a dear high school and college friend while we were in Connecticut (shout out to Jackie!). She’s a devoted reader of EFM, and told me that Shep and her son have the same goggles because she bought them after reading about them here. The elastic-band style cinch makes them so easy to tighten and so unlikely to snag hair – we have (both) loved them this summer! Wanted to give them another mention in case you’re in the market.

As a reminder, you can find allll the things I’ve loved over the last few years neatly organized right here!

What I read in June:
— Lessons in Chemistry | Talk about an unpopular opinion – but this book wasn’t for me. Yes, it’s gotten huge praise from just about every outlet (I think it was Amazon’s 2022 best book of the year?). Yes, I was incredibly impressed that this is the author’s debut novel. Yes, I thought the plotting and storytelling was clever. I loved the dog. But I found most of the other characters somewhat annoying rather than quirky, the novel as a whole depressing rather than uplifting, and ultimately, I found it to be mean-spirited and one-sided toward the idea of faith. Listen – I read plenty of books written by atheists or with characters who are atheist. But this was a book where faith was a theme woven throughout, and there was not one character or moment that showed faith or religion in a positive light nor one character that portrayed a genuine faith – in fact, it seemed the author went out of her way to skewer faith and religion at every turn. While that is absolutely the author’s prerogative, to me it seemed a simplistic, disappointing, and reductive narrative. For those who’ve read it, I welcome your thoughts in the comments :)
— The Gospel Comes With a House Key | I have several friends who love this book… but my feelings are more complicated. Eep! The author repeats over and over that she practices “radically ordinary hospitality,” and her vision for how we are to use our time, belongings, and emotional resources truly is radical. Beautiful and God-honoring, but radical. (And frankly, it makes my goal no. 5 for this year sound embarrassing.) And that made it a hard read for me! It doesn’t mean she’s wrong, but it is hard. It also was literally not the easiest read – though it gave me a lot to chew on, I think if it had been laid out a bit more logically, and written in less of a circuitous, fluid manner, I might have had more takeaways from it. Whew!
— Hello Beautiful | If you loved The Dutch House, I think you’ll love this book. The characters feel very real, and even though I sensed where the plot was going early (and resisted it, at first), the author won me over and I was satisfied with where it ended. I do think I missed some of the layers of meaning because I haven’t read Little Women (!), but I still enjoyed it.

My reading list for 2023! I’m 17 / 24 so far.

Revisiting my June goals:
Settle into our summer rhythm (Yes! Each week has been a new adventure, but I’m pleased with how it’s going so far.)
Film June in June (Done!)
Paint our master bath cabinets (Done! Waiting on cabinet knobs to arrive and I can’t WAIT to see them all put back together.)
Clean out June’s room (She and I have made great progress and probably have one more session to go.)
Plan thoughtfully for our time in Connecticut and Maine (Yes, and I do think it made a difference.)
Complete final prep for and enjoy the book swap (It was a delight!)
Update our budget tracking (No – moving to July)

July goals:
— Update our budget tracking
— Finish organizing the second half of our 2021 photos
— Edit June in June
— Tackle our master closet (Nervous about this one! Will be tougher than some of the other spaces.)

I hope you’re having a wonderful July so far, friends! Feel free to comment on anything I mentioned or whatever else is on your mind :)

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This post is already excessively long, so I’ll keep the intro short :) Here at the midpoint of the year, it’s become customary to share an update on my PowerSheets goals. Pausing and reflecting like this really does help me to appreciate how my little efforts have added up over time, and with ten goals on the docket for 2023, there’s a lot to cover! (And plenty of ups and downs.) Without further ado…

LEARN SOMETHING NEW

Goal no. 1: Create a book for the first 10 years of EFM
Progress I’ve made: Let’s just start out with a real humbling update, shall we? To put it bluntly, there is very little progress to report. I did download the Blurb software and format a past post into a sample layout… and then I got paralyzed by how long one post took and how overwhelming of a project this could be and set the whole idea aside in despair. It feels like perhaps there’s a shortcut I don’t know about (my layout skills are pretty minimal!), but I also could believe I would just have to plug away at the hundreds of posts in my archive one by one. I feel disappointed and frustrated, because I really want this to happen, but the idea of spending 100+ hours to bring it to completion feels daunting.
The next six months: I think my next step will be to challenge myself to complete five or ten posts in one sitting to see if I get quicker as I go along – then I can make a plan from there!

Goal no. 2: Tend to our home trouble spots in a new way
Progress I’ve made: Things are looking up :) I’ve worked steadily through each month’s area, shuffling the original list as needed based on our family’s needs. So far, I’ve tackled my desk/command center, the upstairs linen closet, our coat closet, our master bathroom cabinets, and our upstairs loft. As funny as it might sound, one thing that has helped motivate me is to take a photo or a time-lapse video of my progress. Whether you share them with anyone or not, they’re fun to see!
The next six months: June’s closet, our master closet, and the downstairs linen closet are the next three on my list.

Goal no. 3: Read through the Gospels with CWM’s boxed collection
Progress I’ve made: I’ve made very little progress on on this goal as originally framed, but I do feel I’ve made progress on the heart behind the goal, which is to spend time in scripture. Most notably, John and I have been working our way through The Bible Project’s 14-hour From Adam to Noah class, and it’s been really fun to do together! I take notes as we watch :)
The next six months: I plan to finish the class!

Goal no. 4: Secret goal
Progress I’ve made: My initial plan was to spent 2-3 hours each week chipping away at this with some of my additional time away from work. I very much did not do this in the first half of the year – something else always seemed to be a higher priority – but I did continuously add thoughts and ideas to a doc.
The next six months: A few weeks ago I actually did set a timer and spend one hour of focused work on this, and it was amazing how much I got done. With a looser summer schedule I’m giving myself grace until June is back in school, but at that point, John has agreed to hold me accountable to “pay myself first” and commit to this project for one hour twice a week.

DO SOMETHING KIND

Goal no. 5: Invite one family (or friend) over for dinner each month
Progress I’ve made: Between COVID and a newish baby, we had gotten completely out of the habit of inviting other families into our home. I set this goal as accountability to change that, and it’s been very successful! So far we’ve had two families from church over, some old friends, a really old friend, and some newer friends. And one month we went out to dinner with friends, which was not exactly the letter of the goal, but very much the spirit.
The next six months: More of the same! I will say that though this goal has helped me flex the hospitality muscle and having people over doesn’t feel so foreign anymore, it also doesn’t necessarily feel easier – it can still feel like a lot of work to find a date, choose a menu, and prep our space. But it has been worth it.

Goal no. 6: Reach 5,000 minutes on Peloton
Progress I’ve made: This is going very well! Thus far I’ve reached 4,324 minutes, which paces me well ahead of my goal. I’ve been helped along by the fact that Peloton added outdoor walking and cycling to their tracking system; all of our lunchtime spins around the block and biking to school have added up.
The next six months: My new goal for the year is 8,000 minutes!

Goal no. 7: Update our legacy box
Progress I’ve made: This was inspired by PFC’s “dead box” (but legacy box sounds much nicer, ha!). I planned for most of the progress here to happen in the second half of the year, so it’s no surprise that there’s not much progress to report. We did meet with an estate planning attorney to update our documents in the spring.
The next six months: I’m intrigued by the Big Book of Everything, which Brooke recommended on my original 2023 goals post – I think that will be my starting point when I’m ready to dig into this goal!

SEE SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL

Goal no. 8: Complete our family photo album for 2015-2019
Progress I’ve made: No progress to report :)
The next six months: Complete the album, ha! Since the photos are organized and I’ve already made two of my five-year albums, I don’t anticipate this being too hard.

Goal no. 9: Tend to our family culture
Progress I’ve made: Lots of little-by-little progress! We’ve instituted our new slimmed-down but more frequent parent-kiddo dates. They were met with some confusion and even disappointment at first, but overall have been a joy. We’re working through our summer fun list and weathering a summer schedule with LOTS of variation. We’re thoughtfully pursuing and evaluating activities, including piano lessons and neighborhood swim team. We’ve traveled, played a lot more tennis as a family, tried out sleepaway camp at a Mother-Daughter weekend, and made lots of memories. And I read Habits of the Household and have implemented MANY new practices because of it, which has easily been one of the biggest wins.
The next six months: I’d still love to take the Birds & Bees course!

Goal no. 10: Have fun with my friends
Progress I’ve made: Lots of fun has been had! :) I started the year with a bang with the first Articles Club weekend retreat (such a delight!) and followed it up with many monthly meetings since. I co-hosted a book swap with a dear friend. I took tennis lessons with a friend this spring. I had a two-person book club with another friend and got together multiple times to discuss chapters (including biking the American Tobacco Trail together twice!) And I’ve generally seen more friends more often thanks to our hospitality goal.
The next six months: In the near term, I’d like to use our Museum of Life and Science passes with friends several more times this summer. I’m also still hoping to host a potluck party this fall!

And there you have it! A very robust update on my 2023 goals. If you set your own goals for the year, or even if you didn’t, I’d love for you to share a win in the comments from the first six months! I can’t wait to cheer you on :)

Last year and this year, John and I were grateful to have a three-day weekend in honor of Juneteenth. In 2022, we used it to venture to Swansboro and Hammocks Beach, and this year, we explored Beaufort, NC. Exploring a corner of the North Carolina coast shortly after school wraps up has been a delight the last few years; I think it just might become an annual tradition. I’d love to share a few photos and details of what we did, if you’d like to see!

It’s just under three hours from our house to Beaufort, which for our fam is a short trip. Because of this, we let the kids pack their own car bags, and they did a… questionable job, ha. To tide them over for the last 45 minutes I whipped up these road trip scavenger hunts on the back of a coloring sheet. They were a hit!

Before checking in at our Airbnb we stopped at a Viv’s Fridge right around the corner. Vivian Howard is an acclaimed NC chef (her flagship restaurant is Chef & the Farmer in Kinston) and these fridges are her newest invention: restaurant-quality goodies stocked in a grab-and-go vending machine! We got her signature saltines and beach essentials for our Saturday adventures.

Our Airbnb was in a new development about a five minutes’ car ride from downtown. We could, however, walk to dinner at the Beaufort Hotel, which is what we did (it took about 15-20 minutes). The weather was perfection.

The walk along Front Street was beautiful, right along the water with live oaks to climb and beautiful homes to enjoy (that’s my pick on the left and June’s on the right!). There is plenty of space to walk along the side of the road but there were more cars than I expected – just a note of caution.

Dinner at the Beaufort Hotel was lovely, with an impeccable view. I am proud and also somewhat embarrassed to say I ordered my first fish dish ever – grouper – on Friday night. Eating fish has been a slow burn for me, and though I’ve eaten off of John’s plate for years and loved it, I’d never taken the plunge and ordered it for myself. Turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks :)

On Saturday morning we headed out promptly to make our 9:45 ferry to Cape Lookout from Harkers Island (we had booked tickets in advance). The weather was, again, absolute perfection – blue skies and about 80 degrees with a sea breeze. After a brief stop at Shackleford Banks to let some passengers off, we pulled up on the cape about 15 minutes later.

Like Hammocks Beach, there is some infrastructure on the barrier island – a visitor’s center, bathrooms, a hot dog stand – but it’s mostly just gorgeous sand and water. We stopped to talk briefly with the lighthouse keepers, and I remembered reading an article a few years ago about the volunteer position. Fascinating! And what a view just a few steps from their front door:

Something to aspire to in retirement :)

We set up our Shibumi and spent the next 3.5 hours playing in the water, digging in the sand, catching hermit crabs, and eating Chef Vivian’s delicious dips. As a barrier island, the sand is constantly shifting, so there were lots of tide pools and sandbars to explore. We stuck to the sound side, where the water is calmer (and perfect for little kids!), but there’s also the ocean side for thrill seekers.

We had bought return tickets for the 1:15 ferry but ended up returning on the 1:45. (You’re guaranteed a spot in your time slot but can ride standby for any other.) The big kids got to help drive the boat, and Annie snuck in a catnap on the drive back to the Airbnb. Once there, we took a dip in the community pool before taking showers and cleaning up for dinner.

Dinner on Saturday night was special. We were returning to the Island Grille, the Atlantic Beach restaurant where John and I ate dinner directly after he proposed to me just about 12 years ago. We hadn’t returned since, and thought it would be fun to take the whole crew.

While it was fun, it started out rough – two of our children almost immediately started squabbling over a cup of water and ended up spilling the entire thing. This felt very noticeable in a tiny restaurant – our waiter brought out the mop to clean it up, etc. – but thankfully things improved from there and the rest of the meal was smooth.

Afterwards, we walked the short distance over to the beach – the actual beach where John proposed! – and sat in the sand for almost an hour while our kids played. Our loose original plan was to maybe play mini golf after dinner, but we decided that mostly just sounded stressful with Annie involved and reminiscing side-by-side while the sun went down was quite literally perfect.

On Sunday (Father’s Day!) we enjoyed brunch at an old favorite, Beaufort Grocery. We arrived promptly at 10am, when they opened, and were seated right away on the patio, but the service was pretty slow. The blueberry pancakes were delicious, though :)

We then headed back to the Airbnb and prepped our paddle boards for an adventure. Beau Coast, the community our rental house was in, has a private dock on Taylor Creek; we launched our flotilla from there. John had Shep on his board and towed June on a kid-size board while I had Annie on mine. I was pleased to see that the difference between riding with a newly-minted one-year-old and an almost two-year-old is night and day! She understood she needed to sit still, could easily balance herself, and babbled and pointed things out to me the whole time.

We paddled across Taylor Creek to Carrot Island, another barrier island known to have wild horses. As we were pulling the boards up on shore, Annie started saying, “Erses, erses!” We figured she was looking at an informational photo, but then June said, “No, guys, she’s right! There are horses!!” And sure enough, right off the boardwalk was a mini herd.

After looking at the horses and resting on the boardwalk for a bit, we relaunched and paddled back toward our dock, stopping at another little beach along the walk. I know I sound like a broken record, but again – the weather was perfection. This was a peak Father’s Day moment for John for sure.

From there it was a quick paddle across the creek to get home – you can see our destination in the photo below!

Back at the house we ate a late, snack-y lunch of leftovers before heading for another dip in the pool, then once again cleaned up and got ready for dinner out. Annie fell asleep on the drive into town and actually stayed asleep as we removed her from the car seat and waited for our table, which was a sweet throwback for this go-go-go toddler. The patio view at Front Street Grill was absolutely incredible:

A point of freedom I wanted to share: while we were waiting for our food, we let Annie watch a show on the phone. If you’re counting, this heavy-afternoon napper had gone two straight (very active!) days without a proper nap – and she was feeling it. We felt like we hadn’t given her the conditions to succeed at dinner, and so a show allowed us all to enjoy the Father’s Day meal. Somewhat surprisingly, the big kids didn’t seem to mind that she was watching and they weren’t – probably because keeping her occupied allowed us to focus on them :) I still stand by my general policy of phone-free dinners out, but also think it’s wise to understand when to make exceptions.

On Monday morning we returned to the Beaufort Hotel for breakfast before heading out to Fort Macon State Park. Construction began on the fort in 1826 and it was occupied by Confederate forces during the Civil War. It was sold to the state of NC in 1924 to become a state park, but then pulled back into military service during World War II, when German U-boats were spotted off the NC coast. At the close of the war, it returned to state park status and has been enjoyed by visitors ever since.

Some museums and historical sites can be tough with kids, but our whole family enjoyed exploring Fort Macon. It’s very hands-on – kids can climb, jump, and run throughout the fort – and there’s plenty of historical information without it feeling overwhelming. The kids loved the cannons, of course, and we loved that it gave us a chance to chat through several different big moments in history.

A final little humanizing tale: Fort Macon is right on the beach, and after an hour and a half or so in the fort, we thought we’d spend a few minutes at the beach before getting in the car to head out to lunch and the drive home. We did, and it was delightful, until Annie sat down directly in the water. We immediately moved to scoop her up, to which she responded by laying down in the sand, rolling around, and essentially turning herself into a cinnamon sugar donut. We eventually wrangled her up and hightailed it back to the parking lot, which she was absolutely apoplectic about. Remember: we were now going on three days without a proper nap. She screamed through being stripped down in the parking lot, being washed off with extra water bottles (the indignity!), and being dressed in a new outfit. The only pause in her screaming was to yawn :)

It was quite the ending to the trip, but thankfully we were able to laugh through the absurdity of it, and Annie herself was even laughing a few minutes into the car ride. Despite the rocky ending, it was a truly wonderful trip, and we were so grateful to make it!

I’d love to hear if there’s been a particular historical site that’s been enjoyable to visit, with or without kids. Or if you have any questions about Beaufort, I’m happy to answer those, too!